God’s Blessing, My Children

When I was in college, I was an active participant in Christian Campus House at the then Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, MO. The name is now Missouri State University and the Christian Campus House is still a strong training ground for young Christians to learn to serve and to become “doers of the Word”. It was through CCH that I went on my first cross cultural mission trip, and ultimately through Campus House that I found myself in Port-de-Paix, Haiti after I graduated. I learned a lot about serving and doing as an extension of my love for the Lord, and my relationship with Him. I am forever grateful for my years at campus house! I met so many great people and I am so thankful for fb and for the opportunity to keep up with my college crowd. It is amazing to see how God is using them across the US, and the world. Truly CCH did (and still does) an excellent job training young people that our Christian service was something that was to go with us, no matter where that might be.

During our eight years in Joplin, five of those years were spent at the Wesley Foundation for Missouri Southern State University. Eric and I were able to reverse our roles and be the campus ministers for some great college students. Our oldest daughter, Christa was just a year old when we took that job and just after the beginning of the second semester, Hannah was born. Wilson came along a couple of years after that and then Jett after a couple more. It was a crazy time of babies, toddlers, much cooking, small group meetings, one-on-one meetings, late nights and early mornings! Eric was also a student at Ozark Christian College. Our lives were full and there was always something going on. I remember having to cut short a discipleship meeting with one of our female students to attend to a crying infant. I remember praying, “God, I could do so much more for you if I didn’t have all these kids!”

Talk about a sudden and instant conviction from the Holy Spirit! As if God really needed me to help Him accomplish anything, and what or who could be more important in my life than my husband and my children. That was a humbling time of repentance and submission before the Lord. God didn’t want me to do a lot FOR Him, He wanted me to become a lot LIKE Him. I am so thankful and blessed that He chose six beautiful children to help transform my image into the image of His Son. Oh, there is much left to transform and I am thankful for the willingness of my children to help teach me all about patience, love, self-control, kindness, and thankfulness, and self-sacrifice. 😉

Since that time, the Lord has continually drawn me closer to my home and to my family. We are now in Haiti, homeschooling and living almost every second together. Some days and weeks are difficult, but that is when we step back, re-evaluate our blessings, and re-establish our priorities. Now I am thankful to be a “doer of the Word” in my own home with my own kids. I am grateful for the privilege I have to share the Lord with my little Lotz family. Ok, maybe it isn’t so little anymore…

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it–he will be blessed in what he does.” James 1:22-25